This week’s theme wasn’t easy! Ten years ago I was a 13-year-old kid living in the same town I was born, getting ready to enter high school. My primary mode of travel was a bike or my mother’s generous carpool, and my biggest worry was whose house my friends and I were going to hang out at on a Friday night. Thirteen was a fine age, but was any of it interesting enough to share with all of you?! Uninteresting or not, I thought this would be great opportunity to share a little bit about myself 🙂

10 years ago…I was living in Ohio. I grew up in Toledo and lived most of my childhood in the Village of Ottawa Hills. As a city, we’re closer to Michigan than the next largest town in Ohio, and thus day trips to Ann Arbor or Detroit or even Chicago (a four hour drive) were frequent. The residential village I grew up in is two miles long, and thus the perfect distance for walking to friend’s houses or using the metro park trail to bike for ice cream in the summer. The mall, the local movie theaters, and a friend’s pool was this 8th grader’s only real summer hangouts. If you happen to find yourself in NW Ohio, Toledo has the #1 rated zoo in the country and an impressive art museum 🙂 It was the perfect place to grow up.

10 years ago…I was dancing classical ballet. I started when I was 4 or 5-years-old and kept at it until I graduated high school. I performed in The Nutcracker every December and can probably hum along to the entire soundtrack from start to finish. I didn’t participate in sports, despite brief enrollment in anything from swim team, soccer, softball and tennis, but ballet stuck. The rule in my house was you could choose any activity you wanted, but you had to choose something.

10 years ago…I met my best friends. We met the summer before the 8th grade, and those women are still my closest friends today. Through junior high, high school, college, law school, PharmD and graduate programs and our first jobs, we’ve each done our own thing and still managed to prioritize visits and birthdays and much needed girl chat. They can just now happen in our own big girl apartments or paired with bottomless mimosas 😉

10 years ago…I went to DC on my 8th grade class trip. As kids in Ohio (the midwest? the U.S.?) do, I hopped on a bus with my 8th grade class, and we traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit our nation’s capital. I think it was my first trip to DC, and I still remember the excitement of sharing a hotel room with my friends and running off into the Smithsonian museums. Of course, I have been living here on and off for three years, and now resent the chaos this city becomes with an influx of class trips and tourists haha! Actually, both of my parents lived here right after they married. My mother attended graduate school, and my dad completed his medical residency; their love of the city rubbed off on me too! Although I’m told time and time again that this city looked a bit different back then.

10 years ago…I was no where near interested in running. I dreaded that mile run in gym class. I danced 3-4 times a week; I wasn’t an out of shape kid, but running one mile made me feel like hurling. Also, one time I had to do suicide runs in front of my gym class (as a make-up?), and I messed up the order and had to start all over. I felt like a total doofus. That could have also contributed to my hate of running.

Back in the day…Meet a few of my best friends. 11+ years and counting.

What was your 13-year-old self like? Did you ever go on a DC class trip?

Well, 13 was more than 30 years ago for me LOL, but I was playing volleyball as my sport and only ran as punishment. Of course, less than 2 years later we moved to the DC area, where I’ve basically lived ever since (except for 4 years of college and 2 of grad school…)

Haha omg… 13 seems so long ago… I was competitively swimming and that took up 95% of my life. I was absolutely and totally obsessed and was practicing around 30 hours a week. I actually can’t believe how long ago that was… 2001 haha omg….

Okay, reading your post makes me feel really old. I’m waaaaay older than you. But that’s okay, I had no interest in running 10 years ago either. I only did it for weight loss reasons. I would have corrupted your young adolescent mind back then if I had met you. lol

Oh, my gosh, Victoria!! What is it with 8th grade and DC field trips?!? We had one, too! I am very sorry to tell you that we had these really unfortunate-looking matching t-shirts that we wore on one particular day; had I known enough to be embarrassed, I would have been – ha! Such a fun post; hope you have a marvelous weekend!

Living in PA, we did various trips to DC, because it wasn’t overly far for school. My family would often stop there for a weekend too on the end of a vacation trip on the way back to PA as well. Now I live there and can go anytime, haha.